Summary of research issues in phase I

Concerns over the environmental effects of uncontrolled traffic growth
were first registered in the 1960s with the Buchanan Report (1963).
From the date this report was released the predictions contained within
it have by and large come true. The amount of licensed vehicles on
the road in the UK has increased from approximately 14,000 in 1970 to an
estimated 25,000 in 1996.

The latest increase in traffic is causing widespread congestion in all
of the UK major cities with corresponding impacts on the economy and the
environment. One of the key adverse environmental effects of congestion
is polluted air and from the beginning of the 1980s air pollution levels
began to rise in urban areas, abet not on the same scale as the 1950s.
The levels peaked in 1991 with a serious with a serious nitrogen dioxide
episode in London caused by a combination of meteorological factors and
heavy traffic flows. Since then, with the introduction of unleaded
petrol and methods adopted in the Air Quality Strategy such as improvements
in vehicle technology and reductions in fuel emissions, pollution levels
in urban areas have now started to slowly decline.

Local authorities who are engaged in the first review and assessment
stage of Local Air Quality Management are finding out that vehicle pollution
can still cause pollution hotspots, particularly in restrictive urban configurations
such as street canyons. In the longer term the growth of road traffic
is expected to offset the technical improvements to vehicles after 2008
(DETR, 1999).

There was therefore a need to promote a modal shift away from the private
car so as to reduce congestion and protect human health and the natural
environment. The Transport White Paper and the Air Quality Strategy
have laid out the Governments strategies. At present little is known
about the effectiveness of ‘soft’ options such as restrictions on workplace
parking, traffic calming or promoting public transport and a lot of work
still needs to be carried out in order to change public attitudes towards
the private car.

After conducting this initial research, the group research theme was
formulated with the working title of ‘Promoting modal change in transport’.
The proposal focussed on analysing the effects of congestion on a specific
environmental indicator, local air quality and then examining the methods
of reducing this congestion by changing the public’s mode of transport
away from the private car.